


Thanksgiving Eve

by Klarkom



Category: Magic: The Gathering (Card Game)
Genre: Dominaria, Gen, in this fandom the world gets its own tag, post-mending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-15 06:42:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20861918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Klarkom/pseuds/Klarkom
Summary: A washed-up has-been (Yawgmoth) adjusts to life as Dominaria recovers from the apocalypse (which he caused).





	Thanksgiving Eve

Me dying was the best thing to happen to Dominaria in the last five thousand years, and they damn well knew it. Every December, folks all across the world celebrated the end of the war and burned me in effigy. This year, my town celebrated harder than usual: not only were they free from the tyranny of Yawgmoth and his Phyrexians, but they were free from the tyranny of Belzenlok and his cabal. Folks all over Urborg were adding Belzenlok's effigy to the traditional pyre alongside mine, and it was the same in my corner of the island.

In the twenty years I'd lived in Bethpage, I'd seen half a dozen "lords" rise and fall and end up on the pyre come December. The drag of it was that having someone _relevant_ to burn revived the old tradition of insulting effigies - Belzenlok was represented as a goofy, ugly monster, and the effigies of me were just as irreverent. Most years they'd just lay a black cloth over the wood before lighting it up. Very tasteful and respectful, but I stole it anyway.

Folks were wise by now that if you left your effigy unguarded on Thanksgiving Eve, it'd be mysteriously spirited away before you got a chance to light it up. A lot of superstitious folks realized it was the ghost of Yawgmoth returned from the grave to wreak his horrible vengeance, but nobody cottoned on that he was also the president of the local medical academy. Regardless of what they thought I was, people were careful to hide their effigies, so every year it was harder to nab them. I moseyed around town in clothes I usually didn't wear (a long hooded cloak and soft-soled shoes) and no one looked twice at me. The sky was crisp and calm - crappy weather for fireworks, because there was no wind to blow the smoke away. Every house along the packed-dirt streets had set up a little pile of wood for a bonfire, ready to go as soon as the sun set. As I expected, the effigies hadn't been put out yet. 

Oh, except that one. As I passed by one house, a teenage boy finished tying two effigies - balls of straw wrapped in black cloth - to the post in the center of his pyre. I doubled back to cut them loose as soon as he went inside. 

The dolls looked almost identical. Scraps of cloth formed horns and hands on each black ghost, and they had faces drawn on with white paste. They both had a malevolent look and a wide fanged mouth - the only cryptic difference was one was frowning and the other was smiling. I only had a few moments so I couldn't agonize over the symbolism. I cut loose the smiling doll because it looked better and shoved it in my bag before anyone passing by realized what I was doing. 

That made four, and it was nearly sunset, so it was time for me to get out of there. At each house I'd stolen from there was still one effigy left over, so maybe people wouldn't feel the need to whip up another one before the bonfires started. They'd say the one they had left was me, of course, but I'd know that it was Belzenlok. 

Christ, what a goddamn sissy I am. 

What's it matter to me if people wanna burn a piece of cheap-ass fabric every December the 13th? If they wanna make a stupid-looking demon doll and call it Yawgmoth and blow it up with a fucking firework? It don't mean nothing. They don't know me. What in the goddamn hell do I care if they wanna drink beer and dance and fuck their wives on Thanksgiving Eve, the happiest night of the year, and celebrate the Lord of the Wastes finally being dead? 

For a certain value of "dead," anyway. 

The cold road home was lit up orange in the sunset. Like everywhere in Urborg, Bethpage was surrounded by bogs and floodlands on all sides, which was great if you wanted to buy up a big piece of land and live there by yourself and be left the fuck alone. I lived on a hill too small for anything but a single house, and my land flooded every summer when the storms came, but that was fine by me. My land wasn't useful for anything but standing between me and the rest of the world, and it did that one job very well. 

There was a spot down by the bayou's edge where I buried the effigies every year. The common folks had their little ceremony in town, to give thanks that I died in a fiery explosion three hundred years ago, and I had my own tradition. As I dug, I saw scraps of black cotton from last year decomposing in the soil, and I gave thanks that I'd returned to the earth - humbled and lower than worms, but alive. 

If any of my generals had come back alive from a losing battle, I'd have him executed for cowardice - for stupidly believing his own ass was more important than going balls to the wall at all times. Preserving life wasn't the Phyrexian way. The Phyrexian way was: You do your goddamn job, and if you die I make another one that looks just like you. It worked because Phyrexians knew there wasn't nothing in the multiverse scarier than me. The rules never really applied to me the same as them, though. 

The silty bank of the bayou wasn't frozen yet, but digging was still a pain in the ass. By the time I'd dug far enough to bury the effigies without them washing up in the next rainstorm it was good and dark out. It's dangerous lighting a lantern out in the swamp (you never know what'll come looking for you) but it was a clear night, and I could see well enough by the full mist moon. December was one of the quietest months of the year - all I heard was the occasional cricket and the distant boom of fireworks. 

By human reckoning my body was about sixty years old, and the damn thing was wearing down despite all my efforts. I was in better shape than most men my age on account of being the greatest doctor in the multiverse, but medical technology on Dominaria was like stone knives and bearskins compared to Phyrexia, so there was only so much I could do to mitigate my aches and pains. When I was done digging, I could go inside and get a terrifying amount of pleasure from just lying in a tub full of warm water - an exercise as unsettling as it was relaxing. Feelings were just another thing I had to get used to again - having my consciousness jerked around by neurotransmitters every second of the day, reminding me of how small and powerless I was. Best I could do was put it out of my mind. 

It was a good thing I'd only got four dolls this year, because they were bigger and more elaborate than usual, and I was tired of digging. Dominarian hands had made this doll - gathered the straw, dyed the fabric, painted the face on. A Dominarian mind imagined a thing called Yawgmoth, a picture of evil, the king of all demons, and crafted this doll in its image. As the story goes, the demon Yawgmoth had come to Dominaria from Hell (Phyrexia) to curse and corrupt everything he touched - to make them into his own horrible things. As if an upstart like me had a chance against Gaea. As far as I could tell, it'd gone the other way around. Gaea had made me back into her thing - a thing of flesh and bone. I held each effigy in my fleshy human hand, kissed it goodnight, and laid it in the grave. I mean, the hole. It looked like a grave when I was done filling it though, and I was too tired to tamp it down or anything else. Who was gonna come looking for buried effigies in my yard, anyway? 

I kept my eyes out for trouble as I made my way back to the house. (Even on your own land, it's never safe in Urborg. Gators are the least of your worries.) Inside I drew up that bath I'd promised myself. Folks in Bethpage credited me with inventing indoor plumbing, and it was easier to let them believe that than explain how I knew Thran technology so well. Plumbing, lightbulbs, radiators - they were all just things I'd grown up with, and making a facsimile (powered by burning charcoal instead of powerstones) made people see me as a great inventor. But I ain't no artificer - never have been. I am today what I was at the beginning and what I've been all my life: I'm a doctor. 

I lay there under the water and imagined I was back on Phyrexia, bathing in glistening oil. It felt almost as good. Damn near everything reminded me of Phyrexia in one way or another. I went back there in my dreams, reliving ten thousand years of memories from billions of Phyrexian lives. Even just closing my eyes to relax for a moment brought back twenty years of commingled thoughts. Some days I wasn't sure if I was dreaming of Phyrexia, or if I was on Phyrexia and dreaming of Dominaria, but today I was sure. l'd abandoned my home, come to Dominaria, and died here. 

How I came back I'm not as sure. I thought at first some fellow walking through the swamp picked up my memories, but he looks a hell of a lot like me to be someone else. Folks have cottoned on by now that I got no past besides "he just wandered out of the swamp one day," and they'd be mighty suspicious if I started researching reincarnation or whatever the hell, so I don't get much chance to read up on it. Not to mention I have better things to spend my time on. 

A few centuries after I died, a thing they call "The Mending" happened. I've studied its effects on the multiverse, and the most important to me is all the old methods for traveling the planes have been cut off, besides being a planeswalker yourself. I have only a human's short lifespan to come up with a new way of getting my ass back to Phyrexia where I belong, but I like my chances. My knowledge may be a little outdated, but I'm still a genius, and if there's a way to get back home, I'll find it. 

**Author's Note:**

> There may be more of these later idk.


End file.
